1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related generally to a data processing system and in particular to a method and apparatus for managing a set of items. More particularly, the present invention is directed to a computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer usable program code for using item dwell time to automatically manage a set of serially presented items.
2. Description of the Related Art
Frequently, a user wants to select one or more items of interest from a long list of serially presented choices. For example, a user may want to select one television channel for viewing from a set of available television channels. To determine which items in the set of items are of interest, the user must generally review the content for every item in the entire set of items to find items of interest. The user must then attempt to remember which items in the set were of the most interest. For example, if a user wants to watch television but does not have a specific program the user wants to watch and/or the user does not know the channel on which a desired program or content will be shown, the user must view every channel in the entire set of available television channels to determine which channel(s) are playing a desired program.
If the set of available channels includes a large number of channels, such as is common with cable television or satellite television, the list of channel options will typically exceed a human memory capability for easily recalling/comparing the available choices. Moreover, if one or more channels are playing commercials or other non-programming content, a user may have to go through the set of channels more than once to determine the user's interest in the current program content for each channel. In addition, a human user may be unable to recall which channels were showing commercials, which channels were showing program content of interest, and which channels were showing program content of no interest to the user when the user went through the set of available channels.
Thus, selecting an item of interest from a large set of serially presented choices by reviewing every item in the set of items and attempting to remember which items are of interest to the user is difficult for a human memory. Moreover, reviewing the entire set of serially presented choices through multiple presentations of the entire set of items in order to determine which item in the set is of the greatest interest to the user can be inconvenient and prohibitively time consuming where the set of items includes a large number of items.